The price of Litecoin reached $92.07 early on Saturday, September 2, according to CoinMarketCap. This upward movement pushed the digital currency's YTD gain to roughly 2,025%.

[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.]

Litecoin Basics

Litecoin, which is very similar to Bitcoin, was created in hopes that it would be the silver to Bitcoin's gold.

The alternative asset protocol came into existence as a fork of the Bitcoin Protocol, lowering the block time to 2.5 minutes from 10 and harnessing a different mining algorithm.

It is interesting to note that while Bitcoin benefits from first-mover advantage, Litecoin is centralized, which can at times ease its decision making.

Sustained Rally

Over the last several months, the alternative protocol asset has been enjoying a sharp rally, which has pushed its price - and market capitalization - to fresh, new highs.

Litecoin's price entered this trend near the end of March, breaking free of the largely range-bound trading it had been experiencing.

Trading volume, which had been modest, began to surge, according to CoinMarketCap. This development coincided with Litecoin breaking through several price levels it had never surpassed before.

The price of Litecoin has marched higher over the last several months as the cryptocurrency continues to reach new milestones.

Coinbase Adds Litecoin

On May 3, Coinbase announced it was adding support for Litecoin, permitting users to buy, sell and store the "silver" to Bitcoin's "gold" though its platform.

Litecoin prices enjoyed a growth spurt right around that time, more than doubling in roughly the space of a week, according to CoinMarketCap.

Segregated Witness

On May 10, Litecoin activated Segregated Witness (SegWit), as reported by CoinDesk.

This upgrade cleared the way so the currency's network could harness SegWit transactions, which require less space than regular transactions.

Litecoin beat Bitcoin to the punch with this update, implementing it before its digital sibling.

Iqbal Gandham, UK Managing Director at eToro, a multi-asset broker and social network trading company, asserted that being the first to implement this upgrade may have helped Litecoin generate visibility.

As more people started talking about SegWit, this development helped the alternative protocol asset obtain greater awareness, he claimed.

Charles Hayter, co-founder and CEO of digital currency platform CryptoCompare, offered a different slant on the situation, stating that by serving as a test bed for SegWit, Litecoin has "further cemented its position as a complimentary cryptocurrency" to Bitcoin.

Future Plans

After Litecoin implemented SegWit in May, Charlie Lee, the digital currency's creator, mentioned several ambitious plans, according to CoinDesk.

SegWit's implementation laid the foundation for Lightning Network, a new innovation that would significantly reduce the time needed for transactions.

When speaking with CoinDesk, Lee emphasized that he would do whatever was necessary to expedite the deployment of this network.

If Litecoin manages to finalize and implement this new solution before Bitcoin does, it would be another big win for the alternative protocol asset, and the markets might respond quite favorably to such success.